This story is not only wonderful for children, but also adult basenji lovers. A must for ever family who has ever had or known a basenji. Candle will find a place in your heart forever!

A basenji friendly household boasted of a pair of breeding basenjis and their two adorable puppies. The senior basenjis told their puppies the story of Candle, a basenji ancestor who really did show everyone the way.

An African breed that boasts of a more than 2,000 year history, the famed "barkless" dog (basenjis yodel and make laughing noises instead, these dogs were the loved pets of Egyptian aristocracy and nobility. The story of Candle takes place in Egypt.

A lovable young basenji named Candle is the adored pet in a royal household. Basenjis, naturally intelligent and curious were aware that something wonderful and miraculous was about to take place. The "basenji network" were aware that the days of excess and idolatry were soon to be challenged; a miracle was on the way.

Candle and her owner, a young Egyptian gentleman saw the Star shining brightly in the East and knew they had to follow it....

Readers will yodel with delight as well. This is truly a wonderful family bonding book and it is certainly a beautiful illustration of love and faith. I can't recommend it highly enough. I love it! The lovely illustrations and the gentle story will captivate readers of all ages.

Candle will light a path to the hearts of all who read her story.

A delightful story for all ages, this beautifully illustrated tale of the little Basenji who shares in the joy and wonder of the first Christmas is truly a timeless classic!

When 19-year-old Phoebe Desmond finds out she's pregnant--and is subsequently dumped by Tyrus, the middle-aged "emotionally disturbed" father of the child--she travels to Paris to have her baby in the company of a friend, Marlys Hightower. During her six-month stay in France, Phoebe falls in love with Ben Reuben (a rich artist friend of Marlys' who lets Phoebe board with him), and she exposes some shocking secrets along the way.

It's been years since I've read this book (sometime during my junior or senior year of high school), but this is still one of my favorite books. Phoebe's first person narrative and wit is wickedly amusing and honest. If you like adult books by Judy Blume, then you might like "The Book of Phoebe." Highly recommended.

Goodbye, tongue-tied! hello saucy! I just memorized all the great lines from this way too much fun book, and now I can mow them down at parties when the talk turns snappy. I only wish Phoebe had come into my life sooner! I can't wait for the author's next book!

The Book of Phoebe is one of those books that you h ate to see end. Phoebe Desmond is a heroine who is both irreverent and spiritual in the best sense of both words. When Phoebe finds she's pregnant as the result of her first love affair, she takes off for Paris determined to have her baby without having to tell the baby's father that he is a father. In Phoebe's opinion he doesn't deserve to know. While she thinks of Paris as an escape, it turns out to be more of a learning experience than Yale ever was , teaching her more about herself than she sometimes wanted to know. She's funny, gutsy, courageous and all those good things you want the people you read about to be. This is a story that begins with a girl coming to grips with some major events in her life, events, which might have traumatized someone else. What they did for Phoebe was turn her from a girl I liked very much, into a woman I liked even more. The writing is first rate, the laughs and the tears nicely interspersed. It's the kind of book that makes you feel a lot better for having read it.

Cappuccina is a spunky cow who longs to take a day off from the farm and visit the nearby town. While in town she tries to buy shoes, a dress and have her hair down. Since she is a cow, none of this works out for her. After a pleasant but tiring day, Cappuccina is glad to head back home with a bow on her tail. An upbeat picture book with great illustrations.

A beautifully written and illustrated children's book. I was lucky enough to meet Mary Ann Smith and witness a reading in front of a group of children whose imaginations were held captive by this lovely story and woman.
This is a book that should be part of every childs library. I look forward to the next adventure!

Just want readers to know how much fun my mother and I had writing this book - and reading the manuscript to hundreds of elementary school children along the way. They get credit for letting us know how much fun it is for kids to chime in on the "Bloooooooos" in Cappuccina. And they get credit for giving us lots of ideas about where Cappuccina should go next! New York? The Army? The Moon? Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, fyi, Mary Ann Smith, my mother and co-author is NOT the Mary Ann Smith you have listed as author of other books you are recommending. Cappuccina is MY Mary Ann's first published work.

Best, Katie Smith Milway

Having lost an older copy of this wonderfully illustrated book, I ordered the paperback, only to be disapointed by the xerox quality of the drawings. This book deserves the hardbound format because the artwork is exceptionally authentic. The poorly copied paperback is not worthy.

This little book, intended for children, shows readers of all ages how an abobe home is built, and what all the components are, including a glossary as you go along. Great little book. All children interested in world cultures should read this book.

An educational book for adults and children about the architectural aspects of Adobe construction and SW culture with correct names, pronunciations and explainations of terms such as latillas, santos, luminairas and nichos. It is a description of a real adobe dollhouse in New Mexico. It is a great educational experience.

great for students and general surgery residents to lear pediatric surgery from a case based approach.

If you'd like a quick, easy reading book to review before taking pediatric surgery written or oral boards, Larry Moss has just the book for you. Concise, authoritative, well written, and at times dryly humorous... thanks to Baird's contributions! A must have.

Tom Inge
Pediatric Surgeon
Cincinnati Childrens Hospital

MaryAnn Wehler is a moving writer and gifted teacher. Read this book

While not the first reference book I would recommend for a general library, it is certainly one a library or chemist's office shouldn't be without.

This is an encyclopedia, with abstracts on zillions of chemicals. Is this the most authoritative book on the planet? No. If you want that, go read Chem Abstracts.

If you want an handy reference which will give you a pointer in the right direction for information on chemicals/drugs/biologics, then this is for you.

Got chloroform in your waste water and wondering how it might have inadvertently developed from miscellaneous stuff dumped down the drain? Wow - acetone + bleach powder catalyzed with sulfuric acid = chloroform, with citations.

Not always the most useful, but definately a good resource.

This edition of "The Merck Index: An Encyclopedia of Chemicals, Drugs, & Biologicals" shows remarkable improvement over its predecessor.
Boasting of diverse groups of chemicals and pharmaceuticals, it is a success in its own right. There are just plenty to be explored! The book brims with accurate up-to-date information. Pharmacists, Medics, Chemists, Biologists, Physicists, Agriculturists, and many other professionals who work with elements, compounds and mixtures will find this book very useful. It is revised, and is complemented with detailed descriptions, which include molecular formulae, molecular weights, as well as the percentage compositions of constituent chemicals in a compound or mixture.
It is a valuable reference tool.

This book must be the most organized reference book I have ever used. Its so fulfilling to be able to find exactly what you're looking for when you need it. Includes a common name index, chemical formula index, as well as registry numbers, therapeutic categories for drugs, useful tables, and organic chemical equations. highly recommended!

Let me mention upfront that I live on Block Island. Not a native, but I moved here and live on the Island year round. I got the book because of the nature of it's setting, not the storyline or the author.
I found the book slow without a "hook" to keep my interest. The storyline is unimaginative. The "real" story, it seems, is the Island and island live and characters. To that end the author goes to great pains to write as if she actually knew anything about the island. However, beyond some topographical knowledge, she has none. Indeed, she completely distorts the live and people here. To be sure, we actually have a complete police department, Police Chief and all. Moreover they do live in nice homes, not broken down lean-tos. As for the "rich" natives riding in customized, fancy cars, I have never seen a single one. These are just a few examples of many.
Now don't get me wrong, I believe very much in "poetic license" but not under the cloak of personal, intimate knowledge of a place and people. Clearly, as the previous reviews show, the author dupes readers with her alleged knowledge when in reality there is none. In an interview to our local paper she explained this complete lack of local knowledge and distortion by calling her work "fiction". I would accept her rational, had she desribed a "fictional" place. Instead the author has gone through all her pains of picking a real place, seemingly describing this real place and people who live here.
So - if you like slow, unimaginative stories about a real location distorted by ignorance, this one's for you.

Block Island is the perfect place for FBI agent Poppy Rice to recuperate--along with her lover, ATF agent Joe Barnow. Admittedly, the law on Block Island is comprised of one aging Constable and an alcoholic state trooper, but that's all right. There was never any crime on Block Island. At least there wasn't until Poppy almost runs over the body of an overweight teenage girl twisted and tortured in death.

A con man has opened a camp for overweight girls on Block Island and someone is targetting the girls. Joe goes into retreat, unwilling to accept the possibility that his island harbors a serpent in its heart, so it's up to Poppy, along with alcoholic Fitzy, to get to the bottom of the case. Bumbling officials in Rhode Island and in the Center for Disease Control end up making things more difficult for Poppy.

Author Mary-Ann Tirone Smith writes a compelling page turner. Her descriptions of the people of this north-eastern island are convincing and three-dimensional. Poppy is sympathetic and smart, without being superwoman. I especially enjoyed the character of Fitzy--a hugely damaged individual who battles himself and his own fears.

DC based FBI Agent Poppy Rice and her boyfriend ATF Field Advisor Joe Barnow go on a "required" vacation on Block Island, Rhode Island after her harrowing war in Texas (see LOVE HER MADLY). While riding a bike, Poppy finds the corpse of a teen.

Poppy performs her civil duty by calling the police. A local physician concludes that the female victim died from using bad drugs, but an autopsy proves Dana was clean plus there were external injuries on the body. Three days later, a second teen is found dead. The two share in common attendance at Camp Guinevere, a camp for the obese. Police Officer Francis X. Fitzgerald investigates the homicides, but Poppy finds him and the "medical examiner lacking as the former spends most of his time drinking and the latter under the influence of a prescription drug. Thus Poppy does what she does best, conducting her own inquiries as to whom killed the two overweight farm campers even as the island is quarantined due to a reported plague epidemic.

In her second engagement Poppy Rice remains a wonderful law enforcement investigator who cannot resist involvement even when it could cost her life. The "dual" investigations (local vs. Poppy) are fun to compare as one seems indifferently amateurish while the other passionately professionalism. Joe enables the reader to see the feminine side Of Poppy while the islanders add quirky amusing peculiarities to an enjoyable tale that means forty-eight states and several territories to go.

Harriet Klausner

The most unique aspect of "An American Killing" lies in the writing. Taking a solid but somewhat common plot, Smith adds a layer of observation and interpretation to make for a rich and thoughtfully paced suspense read. For example, Smith spends what seems, at first, to be an inordinate amount of time describing the declining mill town of New Caxton, Rhode Island. However, as the book progresses, many of the clues to the triple murder lie precisely in what is normal and what was abnormal in the minute details of everyday life in New Caxton.

Denise Burke, the narrator/true crime novelist, is very different from Nancy Prichard's new protagonist, Marie Lightfoot. Denise is an interesting and rich personality - not just because she shoots the bull with Hilary Clinton. The book is full of her inner thoughts which are processed in a most female style. Male readers need to be prepared for some very "Venus" type thinking.

The book missing a fifth star for a couple of reasons. First, the book starts with the murder of the Congressman, then spends 90% of the book in a relatively linear narrative of events preceeding the murder, and then has a brief post murder wrap-up. Since the real mystery isn't the murder of the Congressman but rather the triple murder, why confuse the issue. Also, while I enjoyed the asides about the Clintons, I think the marketers do the potential readers a disservice. Bill and Hilary have nothing to do with the core of the story.

Bottom-line: A nicely written mystery that takes time to think and observe. The pacing may be too slow for some readers.

"An American Killing" is for those who look for well-written beach books. Even though I don't read much fiction, I kept reading this crime novel to the end. Mary-Ann Tirone Smith has written a well-designed, well-researched story that broaches a few issues beyond the who-dunnit genre, namely crime theory, motherhood, politics, postmodernist philosophy, an insider's look at publishing, and--most intriguing--a study of the marriage of a woman who behaves with a man's independence. The heroine, a bestselling author who specializes in novelizing true murders, has as much bluster and vigor as any male detective. She's trained her teenaged children to do without her, and her husband, too. She leaves without permission, contacts them only when convenient, and offers them no guilt, no explanations, no lengthy telephone communications. Smith's best writing--of writing that is excellent throughout--details her forays alone to the family's Rhode Island beach cottage, and the dog, Buddy, that keeps her company. She also describes a dying industrial town and its unfortunate residents, a prison interview, an author's personal day in New York City, and the writer's life in Washington, DC, as though she's been there. She has a strange habit of not providing physical descriptions of the men in this story. And the sex is, well, perhaps an editor's suggestion; she skates over it like an embarrassment. But I like the relationships she describes. You see yourself in these scenes; she hits you in places you'll recognize. It's unusual for a private investigator to fall in love with the chief murder suspect, but this works. The effectiveness of Tirone Smith's story rests on unexpectedness. I quibble with the ending, which has the strong smell of change by an editor. This would have been a more powerful story if Tirone Smith had kept the ending I think she was leading us to: a better understanding of crimes of domestic violence, and the knowledge that we know least those we love best--Linda Donelson, author of "Out of Isak Dinesen: Karen Blixen's untold story"

I found this to be a fabulous read. The characters, especially the protagonist, were well-developed and believable. There were so many surprises and twists during the second-half of the book that I was reading with my mouth open. The women are the stronger characters for a nice change. I will definitely be looking for more from this author.

I heard the author discussing this book on a local radio station recently. I'd never heard of her, but found the book in my library yesterday. I'm glad that I had not bought it.

I live in Connecticut, but am not a native like the author. I am not upset at her snide comments about Texas. That is the way people in Connecticut are. They are very snobby and superior. They do not believe there is anything west of the Hudson that is worth knowing about and they make fun of anything out there.

As far as this book, I liked it except for the vulgar language here and there which I guess is necessary these days. It lowers my opinion of the author, tho. She doesn't really have to write that stuff.

Interesting story with a few twists. However, Sue Grafton's Kinsey is more to my liking. I don't think I'll read another book about Poppy.

I found this to be an excellent novel. The cover makes it look like a bit of fluff, but it is hard edged and great reading. It's a hardcore crime fiction, with twists and turns that are excellently connected. I've read some of the other reviews and feel that possibly the 'lightness' of the cover led some folks to the book who may not have otherwise read it. If has the tightness and darkness of James Lee Burke, Dennis Lehane and Nevada Barr. For the record, I am a Texan and while some comments were a bit far fetched, I found nothing to be 'offended by.' I am eagerly awaiting the next Poppy Rice.

Meet Poppy Rice, former Florida prosecutor and Bronx district attorney turned cracker-jack FBI Agent. She was brought to Washington to clean up and revamp the infamous FBI crime lab. With her take-no-prisoners style, she's turned the once sloppy and sometimes inept facility into a state of the art, well-oiled machine, the envy of the rest of the world. Now she's carved out a new role for herself, reinvestigating old cases, the ones that may have fallen through the cracks in the bad old days of slipshod investigations, and that's how she comes across Rona Leigh Glueck. Rona Leigh, former teenage ax murderer, now born again Christian, is sentenced to die by lethal injection in just ten days. She was a seventeen year old alcoholic, drug addicted, malnourished and only eighty-eight pounds at the time of the murders. With her tiny frame and childlike wrists and hands, Poppy doesn't believe she could have wielded a twenty-four pound ax at least a dozen times. Her trial was one big emotional travesty, topped off with very suspect expert testimony, "glee" made her able to do it. But what really sends Poppy to Texas looking for justice is the fact that the FBI crime lab ignored a request from Rona Leigh's public defender. Poppy feels if they had done their job, it just might have proven that Rona Leigh was innocent..... Based loosely on the Karla Faye Tucker case and execution, Mary-Ann Tirone Smith has written a fresh and entertaining thriller you won't be able to put down. This is an intriguing novel that has it all...a terrific and intricate story line complete with twists, turns, and more than a few surprises that keeps you off balance and turning pages, crisp, smart writing full of witty and irreverent dialogue and Texas humor, and vivid, riveting, sometimes laugh-out-loud-funny scenes. But it's Ms Smith's well drawn, engaging and original characters that really make this book stand out, and once you've met tough, clever and very capable Poppy Rice, you'll be hooked for sure. This is a book you don't want to miss. Love Her Madly is the first of what should be a marvelous new series, and should definitely be at the top of every mystery/thriller fan's "must read" list.